People in the tourist part of Monterey look at the expensive bronze statuary of the Cannery Row Monument without laughing. Apparently all the time, every day.

The same mentality that took Steinbeck’s jolliest depiction of marginality and further sentimentalized it as a draw for tourists also sponsored this pole full of prohibition signs a very few blocks away:

People are like oysters. We don’t deal with the abrasive bits — we cushion them in soft glowy stuff.

A little farther along, people on the pier were cooing and joking and barking back at a raft of sea lions. A few of the smaller sea lions were emaciated. Those pictures are too sad to show here.